Parliament: it's like a badly behaved playground

Sunday night – so did my stint on Radio 4′s The Westminster Hour again. It was reasonably lively tonight. No prizes for guessing the main topic – leadership! Both Brown at PMQs and Ming.

I am so fed up with this Prime Minister’s Question Time (PMQs) rubbish. The House loves it. The media loves it. It is a great spectator sport (blood sport that is) but it is not the way to judge leadership or to hold the PM to account – at least, not if you are a grown up. It’s boys behaving like boys do – and I don’t mean that as a compliment!

Can you imagine anyone in the real world behaving like that? Can you imagine in your workplace that sort of shouting and disorder passing for normal at meetings where the manager answers questions from staff or the directors answer to shareholders? I think not! Yet in the majesty of Parliament – we have the behaviour of the playground. And our political system is meant to rest on this sort of behavour. Not impressed!

Anyway – my verdict on this week was that I thought Brown did his best (following his delivery of his own mortal blow in terms of bad judgement) and Cameron just appeared like an upper class bully boy – famed of public school films.

As for Ming – yes Simon Hughes said what he said. But the way it was portrayed in the media was OTT. It was a statement of the bleeding obvious for any party – you always want to do better. So – pooh to all of that!

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